Madelaine

Here is the next patient waiting for "surgery" at the Cliftonville Classic Car Hospital!

madelaien side

Her name is Madelaine and she keeps her rust underneath . The front side doesn't look too bad!

maddy side rear

Here you can see some of the more visible rust, the rear flange bit under the rear screen looks tricky to get right, rear wing is rusted through at the bottom, as is the boot lid.

However, the MOT fail sheet from last year is quite a read!

"Excessive corrosion" in:-

Front chassis near tie bar.
Front chassis near brake master cylinder.
Rear floor pan (both sides).
Rear chassis (near side)
Insecure patches near both spring hangers.
Excessive corrosion in boot floor within 30cm of suspension mountings.

I'm also going to be replacing both spring hangers with complete ESM plates as there is so much "comedy welding" in the area, the underside is completely the wrong shape on one side. I'm going to cut away all the "Mr Blobbly" welded MOT plates.

Although the sill structure is sound, there are so many plates, and such a thick interior coatinf of the brown crumbly stuff, that I'm going to cut off and replace the whole lot, except the inner sill which looks OK, and also replace the two rear floor pans. Oh, and for good measure, one of the crossmember ends will be replaced (the other end is OK!).

Once the Traveller is watertight and reasonably smart, then I'll start on Madelaine. Projected completion time to MOT- one year! September 2006!

The amount of work needed would probably mean most folk, even enthusiasts would scrap the car. I'm doing it because, perversely, I enjoy it! :-)